Hobart Trip: Day 1 Afternoon
Jun. 25th, 2013 08:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xenithTrip report, for our trip to Hobart last week for an arts festival. It's just looking at art work and museum exhibits and stuff. Nothing interesting. Also very long, because I took lots of photos. So nothing here.
See, hotel room. Boring.
But anyway, we went and had lunch before checking into the hotel, because we got there too early (although they kept our bags behind the counter for us, which was good because mine was Very Heavy as I had as much as I always pack for a week away just for two nights because it looked like it was going to be Very Cold). So lunch was at some rather ordinary sushi/Chinese takeaway place.
Then back to the hotel, which I'd book as a Wotif Mysery Deal so it was cheap but the reviews made it sound rather ordinary (the only good thing about it was the location, small, dingy, noisy rooms etc). But the rooms were rather nice. Not big but why do you need big hotel rooms for anyway?. I liked it and it's on my shortlist of places to stay (esp. at $75 a night).
Once we'd settled into the hotel, we went out again. Radical I know :)
First port of call was the tip shop aka the Resources Collectable Shop, which is a really cool place, two floors of books and stuff. I bought a book and stuff, but as I didn't want to cart them around with me all evening I left them there to pick up the next day, so photo will have to wait until later. (Although the book was another ballad one. Mostly I got it because it'll help the books I already have claim space on the shelves rather than getting lost.)(One day I need to take them all down and make a list of what ballads/songs they have in them.)
After the tip shop came TMAG (Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery) so we could see if they were opening late. We knew they were opening late Friday night, but Thursday? Not so sure.
Dark Mofo is the winter festival we came down to have a look at it. There were various art installations throughout the city, each with a sign out the front.
Also TMAG has been recently upgraded. As in closed down for months during the tourist season upgrade, so it's a fairly major upgrade and I haven't been there since so I wanted to have a quick look. And quick it would have to be, because it 3.20 pm and we had to go and pay for tickets for the bus at the ferry terminals and they might close at 4 pm.
The museum staff gave up a guide and said they were open until 10 that night, but only the Bond Store, which is outside the museum building proper, accessed via the entrance courtyard.
While we were deciding which gallery to go and have a quick look at, the museum girl said the bond store was the best, and then a visitor walking past said "Make sure you check the basement of the bond store." But we were going there tonight, so we went into the main building instead.
The museum was certainly in need of an upgrade. It was a bit tired. The first room you walked into on entering the place was natural history, and while the animals had been put out in interesting poses, they looked a bit moth-eaten, especially the kangaroos. The permanent exhibit rooms were mostly information panels with some actually object between them. (Although the model ship room was cool.)
So this the first room you enter now. Instead of worn-out kangaroo, it is a big almost empty room, with doors and windows around the side that give glimpses of the galleries beyond. Obviously intended to pique your interest so you'll want to see what is beyond the windows, and it works.
In the middle of the almost empty room is this partial staircase with displays around and in it.
And, to one side, this display cart thing that is just full of different things all in jars.
Birds head, rubber ducky, apples, matches
Under the staircase were two larger display cases, darkened, with different bits lit up at different times.
Again, all sort of things together that aren't usually seen together. Like early museums were objects were collected together because the it was owner liked them, and there wasn't necessarily any order or context. And then they developed and objects were exhibited with some sort of organisation, usually thematically. To throw them all together again, takes away the rigidity that's usually imposed on a exhibited collection and show off the range and variety that a museum can present. (And is rather like a museum storeroom, but with all departments in together.)
The first gallery is called "The Power of Change". Possibly I need to go back and see what the point of it is. This giant mixer is cool though.
Now this obviously ties into the gallery theme, but it doesn't work. It needs more stickers, and over a bigger range of topics really.
At the other end of the room, items from the Terrapin Puppet Theatre. But that cat is creepy.
The next gallery is creatively called "The Thylacine", for obvious reasons.
Top shelf: Thylacine skulls, trapper's hatchet, wolf trap, snares
Bottom shelf: skeleton laid out flat.
"Earth and Life" is the next gallery, where the central exhibit is a display of fuzzy native natives. No idea why anyone would want to make a display of fuzzy animals but obviously they did. So smaller displays around the side, including live jack jumpers. Why museums feel a need to have live jack jumpers I also have no idea. Small, easy care and dangerous?
That came from a marsupial rhino.
The final gallery is "nungina tunapri". The ratio of information panels to objects is definitely better than the pre-upgrade equivalent. (If I want to look at just words, I can look at a website. Really.)
Photos are a bit rushed, particularly in here. Need to go back and take my time.
Leaving now. That's an installation in progress.
On the way to pay for bus tickets now and it's five to four. Although first we go the bus stop to take photos of the timetables out to Sandy Bay for that night and Saturday morning.
Then with the tickets paid for, we head over to the check out the winter feast. But that's for tomorrow.
See, hotel room. Boring.
But anyway, we went and had lunch before checking into the hotel, because we got there too early (although they kept our bags behind the counter for us, which was good because mine was Very Heavy as I had as much as I always pack for a week away just for two nights because it looked like it was going to be Very Cold). So lunch was at some rather ordinary sushi/Chinese takeaway place.
Then back to the hotel, which I'd book as a Wotif Mysery Deal so it was cheap but the reviews made it sound rather ordinary (the only good thing about it was the location, small, dingy, noisy rooms etc). But the rooms were rather nice. Not big but why do you need big hotel rooms for anyway?. I liked it and it's on my shortlist of places to stay (esp. at $75 a night).
Once we'd settled into the hotel, we went out again. Radical I know :)
First port of call was the tip shop aka the Resources Collectable Shop, which is a really cool place, two floors of books and stuff. I bought a book and stuff, but as I didn't want to cart them around with me all evening I left them there to pick up the next day, so photo will have to wait until later. (Although the book was another ballad one. Mostly I got it because it'll help the books I already have claim space on the shelves rather than getting lost.)(One day I need to take them all down and make a list of what ballads/songs they have in them.)
After the tip shop came TMAG (Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery) so we could see if they were opening late. We knew they were opening late Friday night, but Thursday? Not so sure.
Dark Mofo is the winter festival we came down to have a look at it. There were various art installations throughout the city, each with a sign out the front.
Also TMAG has been recently upgraded. As in closed down for months during the tourist season upgrade, so it's a fairly major upgrade and I haven't been there since so I wanted to have a quick look. And quick it would have to be, because it 3.20 pm and we had to go and pay for tickets for the bus at the ferry terminals and they might close at 4 pm.
The museum staff gave up a guide and said they were open until 10 that night, but only the Bond Store, which is outside the museum building proper, accessed via the entrance courtyard.
While we were deciding which gallery to go and have a quick look at, the museum girl said the bond store was the best, and then a visitor walking past said "Make sure you check the basement of the bond store." But we were going there tonight, so we went into the main building instead.
The museum was certainly in need of an upgrade. It was a bit tired. The first room you walked into on entering the place was natural history, and while the animals had been put out in interesting poses, they looked a bit moth-eaten, especially the kangaroos. The permanent exhibit rooms were mostly information panels with some actually object between them. (Although the model ship room was cool.)
So this the first room you enter now. Instead of worn-out kangaroo, it is a big almost empty room, with doors and windows around the side that give glimpses of the galleries beyond. Obviously intended to pique your interest so you'll want to see what is beyond the windows, and it works.
In the middle of the almost empty room is this partial staircase with displays around and in it.
And, to one side, this display cart thing that is just full of different things all in jars.
Birds head, rubber ducky, apples, matches
Under the staircase were two larger display cases, darkened, with different bits lit up at different times.
Again, all sort of things together that aren't usually seen together. Like early museums were objects were collected together because the it was owner liked them, and there wasn't necessarily any order or context. And then they developed and objects were exhibited with some sort of organisation, usually thematically. To throw them all together again, takes away the rigidity that's usually imposed on a exhibited collection and show off the range and variety that a museum can present. (And is rather like a museum storeroom, but with all departments in together.)
The first gallery is called "The Power of Change". Possibly I need to go back and see what the point of it is. This giant mixer is cool though.
Now this obviously ties into the gallery theme, but it doesn't work. It needs more stickers, and over a bigger range of topics really.
At the other end of the room, items from the Terrapin Puppet Theatre. But that cat is creepy.
The next gallery is creatively called "The Thylacine", for obvious reasons.
Top shelf: Thylacine skulls, trapper's hatchet, wolf trap, snares
Bottom shelf: skeleton laid out flat.
"Earth and Life" is the next gallery, where the central exhibit is a display of fuzzy native natives. No idea why anyone would want to make a display of fuzzy animals but obviously they did. So smaller displays around the side, including live jack jumpers. Why museums feel a need to have live jack jumpers I also have no idea. Small, easy care and dangerous?
That came from a marsupial rhino.
The final gallery is "nungina tunapri". The ratio of information panels to objects is definitely better than the pre-upgrade equivalent. (If I want to look at just words, I can look at a website. Really.)
Photos are a bit rushed, particularly in here. Need to go back and take my time.
Leaving now. That's an installation in progress.
On the way to pay for bus tickets now and it's five to four. Although first we go the bus stop to take photos of the timetables out to Sandy Bay for that night and Saturday morning.
Then with the tickets paid for, we head over to the check out the winter feast. But that's for tomorrow.
